Phnom Penh // Cambodia

In Phnom Penh I shot my favorite collection of street photo treasures. Watching the street life was one of my favorite leisure-time activities in Cambodia! It always made me laugh so hard, when they were passing by with either loads of people on one scooter (A family of five? No problem!) or plenty of goods on it! Sometimes it carried even both. Oh, the joy! bigsmile

The capital city of Cambodia is a typical big city; full of shops, loud and dirty. I spent two nights just to get an idea of it. And my main interest was to visit the Killing Fields.

Most of the cheap accomodations and hostels are situated near the riverside and that’s where also the sex tourism booms. Every filthy old man that I got to see with a young Cambodian girl was hit by a vicious look of mine. Seeing this made me feel like throwing up (in their face). For all other lonely visitors of the city, they equipped the benches by the riverside with some cute bears. bigsmile

CHOEUNG EK

Until 2011 more than 300 Killing Fields had been found around Cambodia. In each mass grave there were between 10 to 1000 bodies buried from the genocide in the Seventies. Choeung Ek is one of the best-known Killing Field around the country.

From 1975 until 1979 more than 3 million people had been killed by the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, leader of the army. This was more than a third of the country’s population (8 million)! Led by his paranoia, he killed anyone voicing criticism towards the Democratic Kampuchea party.

Nowadays bone-fragments are still coming to the surface in Choeung Ek and they are being collected to keep on. Skulls and bones of the victims are housed in 17 tiers inside the stupa. They had been examined by forensic scientists and labelled with the cause of death, gender and age. In the first ten tiers more than 9000 skulls are preserved. Every year on the 20th of May, the Day of Remembrance, they commemorate the excesses of the Khmer Rouge regime at the stupa.

This had been a very touching lesson in the sad history of Cambodia. sad